


Phantasmagoria

by phosphorus_alnilam_saiph



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Bleh, Blood and Gore, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Comedy, Crime, Cuddling & Snuggling, Demons, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Gay Keith (Voltron), Ghost Hunters, Ghost Lance (Voltron), Ghost hunting TV show, Ghosts, Its a story with tons of ghosts, Keith and Lance being dumbasses, Keith can see ghosts, Keith commits crime, Keith has got a rough past, Klance being gay, Lance and Keith try to solve a murder, Lance is an annoying troll for a while, M/M, Medium Keith (Voltron), Modern AU, Murder, Murder Mystery, Not surprising knowing me, Orphan Keith (Voltron), Paranormal, Pidge is a little gremlin, Prank Wars, Sadly, Scams, Slow Burn, Some OCs probably - Freeform, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, The last words your lover says to you are on your skin, and Keith is an asshole, and so has Lance, be gay do crime, enemies-to-lovers, i'll add tags as i go, lance is dead, oblivious keith, warning: death, what were you expecting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:46:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24193783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phosphorus_alnilam_saiph/pseuds/phosphorus_alnilam_saiph
Summary: “You never really know how much you truly love someone until they are gone.”Everyone has them on their skin. Words— the last ones that you will ever hear from your soulmate. Those without the inked black words are considered the ‘Loveless,’ who will never have a soulmate and are looked down upon by society as unworthy of the love that everyone else seems to be guaranteed.Keith is one of the Loveless. Puberty came around and as everyone was passing the milestone of having their soulmark appear one by one, Keith wasn’t surprised that he always found himself markless. He certainly didn’t think that he was someone who could be loved and the universe had a thing for letting him roam lawlessly, his existence not abiding by the rules of games, society, and reality itself.After all, he can see ghosts.After all, in between working as a medium, doing crime, hunting ghosts on a crappy TV program, and avoiding spirits who proclaim him as their personal phones to contact their soulmates, Keith is solving a murder mystery that seems to involve the paranormal a lot more than it does the living.After all, Lance McClain gets hired on his TV show, Phantasmagoria, and he seems to be just as lawless as he is.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	Phantasmagoria

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This is the prologue for Phantasmagoria. It doesn't get into the story much and it's pretty short but it has some of the background of Keith's story. I think I will be posting a chapter every week or two, though that might change when my summer semester starts and I begin to work on other fics. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy!

**Phantasmagoria**

_ noun _

__ a sequence of real or imaginary images like those seen in a dream.

  


Keith is as silent as snow but his silences are as loud as thunder. He doesn’t need to speak a word for people to hear something from him. All they have to do is look in his intense eyes and they  _ feel  _ the words. They know something is there, simmering and festering. 

The rumblings of a volcano and the heat of the lava can be sensed just beyond his stony exterior. And they know— they know— that though he is quiet now, he is a ticking time bomb. He’s a storm. And there is more power and magic in the wordless five-year-old than there ever could be in one who spoke like a firecracker. 

It’s no surprise to him that he ends up where he is now.

Keith sits on the couch and simmers. There’s chicken noodle soup on the tray on his lap and a soft clean blanket is wrapped around his small form. Scooby-Doo is playing on the television. 

Sometimes he says little comments out loud. He chats about the monsters, makes theories about the killer, plays with his food, and makes fun of the characters. But usually, he just looks into the distance at a single point of space before smiling or laughing and turning back. 

It’s peaceful and confusing but happy. He’s starting to get used to being the only living thing in the house. Climbing trees and racing scooters isn’t something one can do well in a cottage, but the calm feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world and reality and his worries makes up for it. 

After all, birds are chirping, there is blood in the mop bucket in the kitchen, the sun is streaming in through the blinds, there’s a dead body in the dining room, he is in good company, and Keith is giddy over getting to skip kindergarten class like a little rebel.

Dear god, he wishes that they never found the body. 

~~~

It takes three weeks and a couple of calls from Keith’s preschool for someone to check up on the Baker residence. Someone calls an ambulance but it’s too late— Ms. Baker is already dead. Someone tries talking to Keith but it’s also too late— it seems that with his foster parent’s last breath, Keith had spoken his last word.

They found the boy sitting next to Matilda Baker’s body. He was drawing in his sketchbook with crayons, smiling every so often as if he was remembering some joke. Or as if he was hearing one. 

They found no one else in the home.

They have to drag Keith out. He puts up a fight, tears in his eyes, legs kicking, and both sketchbook and hippo stuffed animal tucked beneath his arms.

_ ‘Stop’ _ , Keith wants to say. ‘ _ I don’t want to leave her. Please don’t make me leave her. I want to see her one more time _ .’ He also wants to say goodbye, but he doesn’t know how to do that with everyone nearby. 

Later on, they also have to keep him from running to her corpse as they pull it out of the house. 

He never sees her again. 

“Why didn’t you go to one of the neighbors, kid?”

_ Because I was happy. And you ruined that.  _

He doesn’t say that though, just as he doesn’t actually hear those words come from the policeman’s mouth. All he does is translate them. He breaks down everyone’s niceties and calm words until all that is left is the bare blunt questions. Regardless, he doesn’t answer the policeman. He just stares at him— beyond him— as if he is just a ghost and is nothing but an illusion.

“You’ve been in there without anyone for three weeks. How have you been surviving?”

The boy doesn’t have a scrape on his body. He has no cuts, no bruises. He’s been eating and drinking just fine. Not a trace of blood can be found anywhere on his clothing and it appears that he’s been bathing and cleaning by himself. Somehow Matilda Baker has bills that are paid and multiple deliveries were made from her shopping accounts in the weeks following her death.

The strangest thing? The blood in the dining room was mostly mopped up. Febreze mixed in with the scent of death. 

“Do you talk, kid?”

_ Yes, I do. Just not to you. _

_ ~~ _

There are more questions in the following weeks. Keith doesn’t really pay attention to anything else— not the comforting words, the appointments with counselors, the temporary attention, or discussions about where he will go next. Questions are all he cares about and he hoards them in his mind, craving answers with a hungry desperation but never giving them in turn. 

“What did the murderer look like?”

It’s a different policeman this time. There’s been many policemen and many questions and few words. All of it blurs together in Keith’s mind. It feels so unreal that he wonders if he really isn’t talking or if he just isn’t there at all. 

He doesn’t know if he would be able to speak to them even if he could. By the time he would open his mouth, the day would’ve already passed. Another would pass before he got through a word. Time had stopped existing, just as reality had. 

The policeman’s question hits though. For a moment, everything is clear and present. It’s like someone has turned the windshield wipers on during the rain and finally he can see the road ahead.

And that road? Finding out whoever the fuck did this. 

Even more importantly—  _ why _ . 

_ Why? Why? Why? _

That’s Keith's biggest question. It repeats throughout his days like a song stuck in his head. It’s a pesky fly. An itch. A single annoying book placed on the shelves wrong. And no matter how much he thinks about it in the years to follow, he’s not quite sure he’ll ever be able to answer that question, even in his own mind.

Keith is silent for two years. The psychologists call it “selective mutism.” They say that he’s a socially anxious child. A child who has gone through a lot— the death of his father, being abandoned by his mother, and now the murder of one of the kindest caretakers he can say he’s ever had. 

Keith knows better though. The silence runs deeper than feeling like he never has a comfortable place to speak or his fear of abandonment. It goes beyond the label of “orphan” or his own social awkwardness or just being shy. And it definitely can’t just be explained by a normal psychologist. 

For Keith was never silent. He never had been.

He just stopped speaking to the living. 


End file.
